Blood and Gore
by CheesyWaffles
Summary: A story of the zombie apocalypse, told from the the perspective of the undead. Rated for lots and lots of violence. Not based directly on L4D, but somewhat inspired by it.
1. Chapter 1

Southwest Housing District G

February 6th, 2017

1021 Hours, Local Time

Apartment Building 8

A swift, brisk gust of wind chipped at the molding concrete of the ruined street and the faded brick of the buildings which squatted alongside it, whisking bits of brittle dust away from their cracks and crevices and speeding the old buildings toward collapse and degradation.

Building number eight loomed menacingly amongst its dying brethren, obviously having withstood the proverbial test of time with more enthusiasm than the others. The bricks of building eight had barely shifted over the years; large numbers of its doors and windows still remained boarded tightly; the whole place had the feeling of something still desperately clinging to what little life it had left.

A soft, low moan slid by on the wind, almost imperceptible within the sound of the wind bristling and brushing across the street – from the sound of it, the creature that had created the sound was nowhere near, but the sound itself was enough to set one's teeth on edge and neck-hair on alert.

Four black, huddled shapes were perched at the base of building eight's stairs, nearly shapeless save for the squarish angles and hard corners that jutted from their edges in strange places. Thin black tubes pointed from each of the shapes to building eight's well-boarded main door, but the identities of these tubes were hidden within the black things' huddled masses.

The shape closest to the door jerked and rose, thinning and extending upward like a shadow until it formed into its true being. It was a man, dressed from head to toe in jet-black military gear, his face covered by a gruesomely bug-like biohazard mask. The black tube revealed itself to be the barrel of a huge assault rifle which the soldier continued to point rigidly at the door.

The man's free hand shot up like a piston and spun once, a signal to his fellow soldiers. With almost complete silence, the three remaining black shapes scuttled forward, drawing upward to reveal three more soldiers, dressed identically to the first. The first (and apparently the largest) of the black-suited men dropped his hand and tapped a small white button on the side of his gun.

A buzzing crackle of background static jumped into the four soldiers' helmets as their comm systems were linked, immediately followed by the gruff, tobacco-hardened voice of their leader. As was regulation, he never turned away from the building or lowered his gun as he spoke; doing so was usually an invitation to sudden, messy death.

"Candy," he growled, indicating the soldier to his left, "On me…we're left. Rolph and Matheson, you're right. Simple and easy, boys - we've got confirmed reports of multiple grays, but the target's the Angel. You find her, you report, we're out of here. Got it?"

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Aye, sir."

"Good. All right, the grays are expendable, but the boys back home want the Angel _alive_. Don't mean you can't…_coerce_ 'er a little, but she better be screechin' when evac gets here."

Candy, Rolph, and Matheson's heads simultaneously dipped in a single nod as their leader's hand rose and pointed two fingers toward the door twice in quick succession. All four sprung forward with frightening quickness, but Candy was the fastest; his boot swung upward and contacted the shoddy plywood with a _crack_. The slightly soggy boards imploded, blowing shards of plywood into the building's dark, decrepit lobby. The soldiers poured through the door, spreading to the left and right as their captain had designated.

The lobby was dark, gray, and small; cobwebs hung from the rotting rafters above while mildew grew in the linoleum below. Two hallways immediately greeted the doorway, leading left and right down the building's outer walls. The muted thumping of the soldier's boots was overcome by the creaking and moaning of the building's foundations…but the sounds that seeped down the halls and through the walls were not all from the dying structure.

Through their masks, Candy and the captain could see almost all the way down the hall. Apartment doors lined the right side, softly illuminated by the dirty gray light emanating from the high windows on the left. At the end of the hall was a door slightly bigger than the rest, just after the last apartment – the sign above read "Stair Case A". The two soldiers continued forward, almost running despite their hunched postures, setting the staircase as their goal.

They were about five meters away when something stumbled from the door frame, catching itself roughly against the left wall. In the moment before the triggers were pulled, they determined the thing's identity; it was a gray, of course.

The thing which had almost fallen on its face appeared mostly human, dressed in an old, worn-out suit with a pair of broken glasses barely hanging on to its haggard face – but it hadn't been a man for quite a while. The gray's skin was pale and dusty, and nearly as torn as its clothes; however, the wounds covering it were dry and black. The thing's white hair had all but fallen out, leaving a memory of itself in the mangy tufts which still clung to its cracked scalp.

But as always, the least human thing about a gray was its eyes. The thing standing in front of the two men turned, slowly, and looked at them over its glasses.

Its eyes were empty, completely clear of emotion, except for perhaps the look of slight, lost confusion. They were the eyes of a zombie.

"Mark!" Candy barked into his mic, then squeezed his trigger. The gray's chest exploded in a crackle of lightning, blowing bits of leathery flesh, bone, and sticky black spackle against the wall behind it. It stumbled backwards, bounced against the wall, and had just enough time to look down at its ruined sternum before a second rattling salvo blew off the top of its skull.

The gray's spine arced backwards, hung for a moment as the thing stared forlornly at the ceiling, then gave, allowing its body to drop to the floor in a heap. Candy walked over to the thing, placed his boot against the remains of its head, and made good and sure it was dead.

"Gray o' the day, boys!" He shouted jovially, shaking a tooth from the grip of his boot. It was a popular phrase; getting the first kill on these sort of missions was always a joy. Good-natured laughter crackled over the comm, then cut short as Matheson's voice uttered the arrival of another hostile.

"Mark." He said quietly, and the sound of hushed gunfire echoed down the hall. The "confirmed reports of multiple grays", it appeared, were confirmed indeed, but this was all but commonplace. Candy and the captain turned and hustled up the stairs, making their way quickly to the second floor. A third gray met them just around the corner, and its jaw fell slack just before it was-

"Mark!"

-dispatched.

Over the next fifteen minutes or so, the cries of "Mark" and the cackling of gunfire were the only things to be heard in the deserted building, punctuated here and there by the moans of the dead. The four-man squad swept up and down the building, kicking down every door that wasn't already hanging open, and slowly eliminated the already dwindling zombie population within.

In apartment C3, they found what they were looking for.

Rolph and Matheson were the first to come across the room, hidden away in the back of the third floor. It gave with a soft _crunch_, letting the two see the creature that was huddled against the far right corner.

"Ah-hah," Rolph whispered to himself and he as his partner hurried inside. They spread out as much as possible in the confined space, keeping their rifles trained on the corner. Matheson tapped the side of his gun again, making sure his comm was open like he always did, and spoke.

"We got 'er, sir. Room C3, right side."

"On our way." The captain replied.

Matheson looked up again just as whatever sat in the corner did the same.

A strange creature indeed was in the room with them.

It was a girl in her late teens, maybe early twenties, or at least it _had_ been at some point, but it seemed that the point in question had already come and gone. Her skin wasn't quite a gray, but rather a very pale shade of blue, and her dark brown hair – or was it purple? – covered her right eye. The eye that was visible was horribly blood-red with a pupil that came to a harsh, sharp line like that of a cat. Dark, dry blood ran from her eye to her chin past her nose, which was covered by a strip of medical tape.

The thing that had been a girl had a soft, rounded face and a slender build; she might have been attractive at some time in the past. Now, her right arm was missing below the elbow, leaving only a stump wrapped in gauze to emerge from her sleeve. She wore a dirty white nurse's uniform, with a collar that was tight around her neck and a large red cross on the chest. The uniform's skirt came most of the way down her thighs, but Rolph found himself wishing it came down a lot farther; her pale blue legs ended, basically, in blood.

It was unclear whether the blood came from lacerations in her ankles or whether it was just being excreted like sweat, but the zombie's feet were completely slick with bright crimson liquid. It wasn't in low supply, either; a fairly large pool of the stuff had gathered around her feet.

Rolph's hand jumped to the front of his mouth to staunch the vomit trying to jettison from his throat before he realized that his mask was in the way. He choked and swallowed, feeling the burn of stomach acid at the back of his throat. When he looked up, the dead girl was staring at him. Her cat-like eyes were not empty like those of the grays, but they were distinctly inhuman; they made him think of demon's eyes. The soldier brought his gun upward with such a jerk that Matheson looked over at him in surprise.

"Stop it," Rolph growled, his teeth clenched together tightly, "stop it."

"Al…" Matheson's voice came, "what are you-"

Albert Rolph moved too quickly for his partner to have stopped him, even if he had tried. In a moment, he stood over the tiny zombie, his shoulders heaving with heavy breath. She looked up at him, her dead eyes soft and accusing.

"Stop it!" Rolph cried, and swung the butt of his rifle down. The stock collided heavily with the side of the girl's head

_Crack._

The little zombie jerked away, holding her good arm to the side of her head as if to protect herself. She cried out, a high-pitched sound that was halfway between and yelp and a moan, and hunched even further into the corner.

"Disgusting little-" Rolph began, raising his gun once more, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him. When he turned, the captain stood behind him, his free hand pressed to the side of his helmet.

"This is Zeta squad, HQ – package in custody, calling for evac." He said, giving Rolph a pat on the shoulder. He took his hand from the side of his head and gave Rolph a look that was visible only through the limiting eyes of his mask. "That's alright, kid. Plenty of time for that back home, yeah?"

Rolph stared at him for a second, then dropped his gun back to his side with the long breath of a sigh.

"Right…sorry, sir. Things just…creep me out, 's all." The younger soldier said.

As Rolph turned back to the door, Candy walked up to where the captain was standing. He was fingering his rifle's safety, almost nervously, which struck the captain as odd; Candy wasn't usually one for nervous.

"Sir?" He said, squinting down at the pitiful creature sitting on the floor.

"Yeah?"

"This zombie…this, er, Angel – haven't I seen her somewhere before?"

"Eh? What do y'mean, corporal?"

"Her face, sir, it's…familiar, maybe?"

Now it was the captain's turn to squint. It seemed odd that Candy would recognize a _zombie_, of all things; after all, his team usually didn't let the things live long enough to show up somewhere else, unless…unless he knew her from when she was alive, and that would have been a startling coincidence, because Candy was from Minnesota.

Which was quite a ways from where they were.

Squad Zeta's captain squatted low, dropping his gun and letting it hang by his side. The zombie's face was turned away so that her dark hair almost completely obscured her face, so he took hold of her chin with a gloved hand and turned her to face him.

She didn't seem, well, _familiar_ at first – just the usual features of what people had started to call "smart" zombies: the strangely colored eyes and skin, the way the eyes looked, not _quite_ empty…no, she was just a-

Wait. No, that couldn't be right. He'd only looked over the "files" the desk boys had come up with once or twice; it couldn't have been that he'd seen her in there somewhere.

But it was. It hit him suddenly, so hard that he let out a little gasp of surprise, but Candy was right, they _had_ seen her before. And that meant-

The captain jumped to his feet with such suddenness that Candy was almost knocked backward into Matheson, who hadn't moved since they had all entered the room. He spun like a dervish and almost screamed into his mic:

"Everybody, weapons up!"

Rolph jumped and turned towards him, a tiny sliver of panic suddenly jamming itself into his brain. "What is it, sir? She's not-"

"Not _her_, idiot! Now, weapons _up_! She's not the only one-"

Squad Zeta's captain was never allowed to finish his sentence, because he was inconveniently interrupted by the wall behind him exploding. A large chunk of rotting wood hit him in the side of his head as he turned, splattering the right side of his mask with spongy chunks of housing.

An unearthly bellow of rage pounded through the air, nearly deafening the four men. The hole that had been a wall suddenly gave birth to an enormous, lumbering shadow, but the thing was moving too fast to clearly see what it was. Squad Zeta's unfortunate captain, his vision obscured with filth, never saw it coming.

Halfway through the captain's turn, he was caught in the middle of the forehead by a huge piece of metal that surged from the darkness like a bullet. He didn't even manage to make a sound as his mask, quickly followed by his skull, caved in with a _crunch_. The captain's body went dead-slack just before his body was hurled, head-first, into the wall behind him. The newly dead body hit the wall with a wet sound, then tumbled to the floor.

Candy swore and jumped backwards, immediately tripping over Matheson, who had started to move forward. He screamed and fell backwards, riddling the ceiling with the bullets that had been meant for whatever had just killed his commanding officer. Matheson, then, stumbled forward in response, directly into the grasp of the huge hand that swung forward to meet his head. Huge, muscular fingers wrapped around the soldier's head, lifting him into the air as Matheson, forgetting his gun, grabbed at the thing encircling his skull in a panic.

The hand lifted him about two feet off the ground and, without hesitation, snapped into a tight fist. Matheson's arms fell, rag-dollish, to his sides as his head suddenly ceased to be circular. The hand whipped outward, throwing his limp body into Rolph, who went down like a sack of wet kittens.

Candy lifted his gun once more, only to have it ripped out of his hand as that huge slab of metal swung, bending the rifle into a crumpled mess which splattered into a menagerie of little metal parts against the wall. The huge creature stepped forward, lifted a massive boot and brought it down on Candy's chest, crushing his sternum, ribs, and any of those pesky vital organs that happened to get in the way. Candy gurgled and was gone.

Private Albert Rolph struggled like a madman to rid himself of Matheson's increasingly crunchy corpse as the monster that had killed all his squadmates lifted its boot from Candy's chest cavity. Now that the thing had finally decided to stand still, he could make it out; it was a Heavy.

The zombie before him stood well over seven feet tall, and was built like three tanks stapled together; its arms, legs, and neck bulged with muscle and pulsing veins. A gray welding mask covered its face, and he could hear the thing's thick, heavy breathing from inside. It wore a large, filthy camouflage jacket and ragged black jeans that appeared to be held to its legs only by the virtues of the strips of duct tape sporadically wrapped around its legs. Its feet were clad in two great steel-toed work boots, the right of which was now shiny with blood.

Instead of a right hand, the zombie had a huge meat-cleaver erupting from the sleeve of its jacket.

The giant creature raised its head and sniffed the air – it sounded like a snake getting caught in an old lawnmower – then turned to face the private. Rolph screamed inside his helmet and pointed his rifle at the thing's face, jamming at the trigger again and again but too panicked to realize that the safety was, in fact, on.

The monster took one thunderous step towards where Rolph lay, but hesitated when the girl behind him let out a whispery little moaning sound. The welding-mask clad beast stopped for a moment, turned, and grunted something in response. As the private watched, the girl looked at him, hesitated…and pointed at the dead captain before moaning again. The monster seemed to contemplate this for a second, then unceremoniously turned back to Rolph, lifted its cleaver-hand, and buried it in the man's skull, almost cutting his head in half.

Rolph's hands dropped, letting his gun clatter across the floor.

Squad Zeta was dead.


	2. Chapter 2

"No doubt, you have heard in recent months talk of 'smart' zombies – these 'special' zombies _rumored_ to possess some inherent remnant of sanity. People of the Americas, I am here to tell you, today, that such claims are of absolutely no merit. These 'smart' zombies, as some call them, are nothing if not _more_ dangerous, violent, and bloodthirsty than their gray kindred. If you encounter such creatures, I assure you that immediate elimination is your best, and safest, option." – _President Meri Elizeir, from his 23rd speech on combating the zombie menace_

***

[_Editor's note: the following is the full, uncut record of the activities of the two "smart" zombies, code-tagged "Blood" and "Gore" by the Federal Bureau of Undead Affairs. These records have been translated from the zombie "language" for greater understanding and analysis of texts, but let it be known that not all zombie "words" can be translated directly to American Standard (English) or, indeed, any other human language. Such words (such as proper nouns and some abstract terms) have been summated, and [bracketed] for clarity. _

_Under no circumstances are these records to be shared with, or distributed to, civilians. Thank you for your cooperation.]_

"Wait…please, do not kill him. The three are enough."

"Was he the one? The one who hit you?"

"…No, it was…him. That one."

The huge zombie with a mask for a face and a cleaver for a hand turned, heaved, and ended the last real life in the room. He pulled his weapon free with a jerk, sending bits of brain matter and skull fragments skittering across the floor.

Gore brought the thing to his face and sniffed it. A deep, reverberating, elephantish sound grumbled from within his mask as he lifted his huge gray hand and began to wipe bits of meat from the blade.

"Why did you do that?" The little zombie behind him moaned, looking forlornly at what was left of Rolph's head. She suspected she knew the answer, though.

"I didn't like him. I don't like any of them." Gore thumbed a large chunk of grayish blob off of his knife and turned to face her. "Besides," He growled, "you lied, didn't you?"

Blood looked at the floor, her eyes showing the guilt her face couldn't easily betray. "Yes." She moaned simply.

"You're too good to them, [little one]." Gore groaned.

The dead girl did not reply, only began to crawl towards the nearest corpse – in this case, the captain's. Her feet left thin, streaky trails of blood behind them as she made her way across the floor. When she came to the dead man's side, she immediately used her good left hand to manipulate the human's broken mask and remove it from his destroyed face. She slid the mask off and pushed it to the floor, then returned her attention to the head. A human would have been repulsed by the gruesome wound to the man's face, but Blood was not a human.

Without hesitation, the zombie girl delved into the man's broken skull with three dainty little fingers and pulled out a jiggling globule of brain matter. She studied the morsel, wide-eyed, for a moment before dipping her head and snatching it into her mouth. As her jaw closed around the blob, a sudden shiver ran down the entirety of her body and she squeezed her eyes shut as what sounded like a hollow, rattling purr emanated from her chest and throat.

Behind her, the sound of weak floorboards creaking under the weight of a great mass vibrated through the air as the monstrous creature known as Gore approached. She turned to face him as he knelt, somewhat awkwardly due to the atrophy eating away at his muscles, bringing his hulking body nearer to her and the floor. He placed his hand on her shoulder in a disturbingly human signal of affection, dwarfing the rest of her body by comparison.

"You have not fed in so long, [little one]. You will waste away like this, I think." he said, his deep, groaning voice reverberating soundly as what little light in the room shimmered in the visor of his helmet. "Why do you pity them so?"

Blood did not answer, but looked away again with that same guilt in her eyes – the shimmer of sadness that seemed at once so familiar and so alien to Gore's dead mind. He knew her nature, but it was thoroughly beyond him to understand it. How one could feel wrong to kill these monsters, these warm creatures that sought nothing more than the extermination of his kind…no, he felt he would never understand it.

Instead, Blood delved once more into the deceased man's body, bringing forth this time a much larger chunk of his anatomy than before. Almost delicately, she tucked in to the meat, tearing off a small gobbet and chewing, but not swallowing. Gore forsook thoughts that were, really, beyond that which he cared to set his mind upon, and removed his hand from the little zombie's shoulder. With it, he took hold of the bottom of his mask and lifted, tipping the thick layer of plastic upward and away from his face, if indeed one could still call it that.

Of course, the countenances of most all of the undead "species" were usually nothing to be praised; the lower class, the "grays", cared for nothing more than the ravenous and thoughtless devouring of human flesh, and even those more intelligent members of the horde had little concern for appearance. Gore's face, however, had been ravaged by his murderous lifestyle somewhat more severely. His dead, gray-green skin both hung and clung to his skull in different areas, while patchy wisps of white hair rose from his crusted scalp. Gore's eyes were clouded and milky, almost obscuring his gray irises, which had almost been overtaken by his vastly dilated pupils. His nose was, now, little more than a ragged hole in his face, and his mouth…well, most of his mouth wasn't there. Gore's lower jaw was missing entirely, leaving the upper portion of his mouth to hang like the opening of a fleshy, broken-toothed cave before the cavern of his throat.

He looked rather like something straight from the nightmares of those with the most diverse of imaginations.

Blood chewed the morsel for a moment more, shifting her body towards his with ghostly grace. The large creature before her bent forward as she did, bringing their faces together in a ghastly kiss. The smaller zombie gave a little movement of her neck and ejected the glob of mulched flesh from her lips and into Gore's torn, gaping maw. He swallowed, savoring the rich taste as she went back to chew him another piece. It was a feeding ritual the two had learned to adopt, as Gore obviously lacked the ability to masticate human meat himself. Blood repeated the action several times, until Gore bid her to take more for herself and closed the mask over his face once more.

Once Blood had finished her meal, Gore stood and lifted his head towards the ceiling, letting the sound of rough snorting rack the air.

Gore's eyes had been the main thing that had started to go after his death; as a result, he was almost completely blind unless things were very close. As such, his other senses had increased exponentially, resulting in increased responsiveness to olfactory and auditory stimuli; in other words, his sense of hearing and smell were almost supernatural in their strength. In addition, he had developed a sort of "sixth sense" as far as danger was concerned, this sense being translated mostly into his sense of smell; Gore could quite literally smell threats to their well-being.

And he could smell it now.

"Come, [Blood]," He growled, turning toward her and extending his colossal hand, "the humans will return soon."

The girl (for she still was one, though certainly of a different sort than once) turned toward him suddenly, lifting her tiny, blood-soaked hand to grasp one of his outstretched fingers.

"Why do you say such?" She moaned as she allowed herself to be drawn upward effortlessly. "Are the men here not [dead]?"

"I have just [killed] three of their best, [little one]. They will soon know of these ones' absence, and flock to their bodies as the flies do to ours."

The little zombie took a cursory look at the corpses strewn across the floor, then back into the blankness of Gore's mask. She struck her back teeth together harshly, resulting in a grating _click_, the zombie equivalent of a nod. Without another word, Gore stooped and slung her tiny body into the crevice of his arm, cradling her body against his chest as a human would with an infant. He turned and took one thudding step toward the doorway before his entire body gave a sudden jerk of foreboding.

"Not this way." He grumbled to himself, turning and sprinting towards the room's back wall. Just before the impact, he placed the flat of his cleaver-hand in front of Blood's face, using it to shield her head, and the length of his arm to protect the rest of her body. A moment later he crashed through the wall, which gave away somewhat more easily than it would before the years of rot and termites had set into it. Chunks of drywall and shards of soggy plywood blew in all directions as Gore's immense bulk sailed into the air and dropped like a brick pigeon.

Gore hit the ground feet-first, his massive boots pounding twin footprints several inches into the soil beneath, in an impact that would have instantly shattered the legs of a normal zombie or human. The bones of his legs (and the rest of his body) had, since death, thickened and begun sort of a process of petrification within his body and, as such, were much harder to break than most bones.

Nonetheless, the force of the impact stumbled him at first, but he quickly managed to right himself into a shambling run that carried him forward, across a brown-grassed lawn and through a rickety wooden fence that gave way like a stack of toothpicks before his momentum.

That was when Blood finally heard it.

The steady _thop-thop-thop_ sound of one of the humans' air carriers echoed over the desolate neighborhood from somewhere distant, but it grew ever nearer. The evacuation, the former soldiers might have noted, had nearly arrived; it had come, though, somewhat late. By now, the humans would have realized that their black-suits had met their ends, and it would be only time's judgment when the warm things would come searching for their killers.

Gore began to run faster.

The sound of the helicopter grew nearer, and it became readily evident that the two fleeing undead were not the only ones who had taken notice. Hordes of foul-smelling, gray-skinned former humans came, screaming and screeching in unintelligible tongues, from the shadows; zombies came streaming from the previously empty windows and doors of houses, from behind and inside sheds, and cascading from the broken windows of upper floors. Slavering bodies left their hiding places and sprinted full-bore towards the sound of the approaching vehicle, leaving those slow or broken to be trampled before they could peel themselves from the ground and crawl after.

A male zombie in a ripped gray jumpsuit barreled heedlessly into the much larger Gore's path as he ran. Gore swatted him aside with a casual stroke of the broad side of his cleaver without slowing, and the obstructing gray flew to the side and rolled a few times before jumping back to his feet and reentering the pursuit as if nothing had happened. Behind him, the sound of the helicopter grew steady as it came to a stop near the building they had just fled from.

The screaming throngs of dead men and women came to a stop as well, just below the flying metal beast. Claw-like hands groped upward hungrily, ripping imaginary flesh and digging into imaginary muscles. Dozens of ashen faces growled and screeched upward, gnashing their torn jaws and broken teeth at food they could not reach. Those that were strong enough tried to climb the thick masses in an effort to gain any purchase towards the can of humans hovering just maddeningly above their heads.

A door slid open on the helicopter's side, revealing an enormous machine gun, as well as the black-suited human behind it. The weapon's barrel twitched and swung toward the crowd below. Laughing, the soldier pulled the trigger.

A razor-blade storm of hot hail spewed into the tightly packed bodies, ripping them into shreds and mist. The gun swung round, sweeping the crowd with lightning death, blowing zombies apart and knocking back those who stood behind them. Utterly without regard for the destruction raining down on them, those still alive rose to claw with all the more ravishing hunger at the sky.

The gun railed, its pilot laughing and swearing, as the helpless creatures below were mowed into meaty sawdust.

Gore pushed his rotting body to run faster as Blood gripped his jacket and began to weep tormented tears of blood.


	3. Chapter 3

"…it has been earlier noted that the zombie language, insofar as we know it, relies almost entirely on the tonal range of speech, rather than the consonant dependence of American Standard and other world languages. This is, for the most part, why translating the language can be such a difficult task – however, it is not the only reason. Scientific research has begun to suggest that these creatures seem to possess, perhaps, a sort of primitive telepathy; a hive-mind, if you will, that may allow them to communicate beyond the mere range of the vocal…" – _Excerpt from __Undead Education: The leading source for understanding, and defending yourself from, the zombie menace__ by Jackson Wright_

***

Night, as most considered it, had fallen thickly over southwest housing district G and the remains of its inhabitants. The ghostly screeches of the not-quite-dead had long since ceased, returning the night's sounds to whispers of wind and scratches of airborne paper scraps.

A somber pile of dismembered bodies rotted silently in the middle of the otherwise empty street. Stinking ichor seeped and dissipated into the surrounding concrete from the mangled bodies of the dead, as well as from those few who had survived. These remaining zombies were, however, so far destroyed in the physical sense that they almost entirely lacked the ability to move, dooming them to writhe vainly among the bodies of their brethren.

Far and away from the scene of all this destruction (which the humans, as well as their vicious bird, had long since evacuated empty-handedly), two specific zombies had finally ceased their flight. They dwelt, now, under a small road-bridge that had once overpassed a large creek. The creek was dry, but the overpass remained, disrepaired though it may have been.

Gore's immense height forced him to stoop low to avoid scraping his head against the underside of the bridge as he laid Blood in the dusty grass growing from the upward-sloping ground. The undead girl's body immediately curled inward rigidly, as if her body possessed a core of spring.

Blood's body still trembled visibly, though not with such violence as before, but she still wept; it was an empty, ghostly wailing sound, unrecognizable as anything more than the dying moans of some feral animal that might, at some far-past age, have resembled a human. Thin rivulets of blood flowed like water from her eyes, which were opened so wide in much the fashion that the eyes of a human would _not_ have been whilst crying. The crimson liquid spilled down her cold cheeks, part drying and part dripping and seeping into the dusty ground below.

Humans had constantly speculated on the oddity of the zombies' herd mentality – that being, the uncanny adroitness that the bloodthirsty creatures displayed in relation to their being unnaturally in tune with one another. All zombies, of course, possessed augmented senses of both smell and hearing, but the occurrence of the creatures reacting, sometimes, almost simultaneously to these factors had been documented numerous times. Zombies seemed to be able, on some subconscious level, to communicate in some manner other than the unintelligible groans and screams that could be readily heard. This was, in fact, more true than most humans could have imagined.

The small zombie trembling underneath an underpass in some forgotten section of Americana possessed a curse much greater than the mindless hunger of the horde. By the cruel nature of the mutations occurring in her body after her demise, which left whatever portions of her brain that associated themselves with morality intact, Blood was left completely unable to kill the humans that were her only source of food. She could feed on the bodies of the already dead, but against the living, she could not even defend herself with violence. This was, still, not her greatest burden.

Where the brain-dead masses benefited from an interconnectedness of instincts, Blood could only suffer. Where a gray was alerted to the presence of living flesh, Blood felt only the fear of death which that zombie no longer could feel. Where a gray gleefully threw itself into whirling blades and whizzing bullets without pain or regret, Blood felt every cut and puncture and death as if they were her own and that of a human sibling.

Back in that empty housing district, dozens of zombies had died for the last time, and several more grievously maimed.

The remains of the girl's mind had been filled with a hurricane of the pain and death of nearly a hundred of her kin, a blinding storm of screaming sorrow that ripped and violated her already broken mind. Ten strong-minded men could have been driven irreversibly mad by the mental anguish she experienced, but she could do nothing so easy as going insane to relieve the pain, not any more.

Instead, she was left to wrench and shudder, her wide red eyes staring blankly into nothing as the horror chewing at her mind began to slowly fade away.

Standing just a little ways away from where his only care in undeath lay sobbing, a cold giant stood, feeling his own peculiar brand of helplessness at her condition. Gore's huge cleaver-hand hung limply at his side, useless without something to cut or someone to kill. His mind, though less eroded than that of an average zombie, could not comprehend the pain she felt on any level. His body, completely dead to physical sensation, was impervious to pain and feeling. He was invincible, a biological tank of a creature who could walk through whole armories worth of bullets before being slowed.

And there was nothing at all he could do to comfort the one whom he cared for more than the sad remnants of his own life.

He did love her, in whatever way he still could; though his mind could not necessarily understand it, that aspect of his humanity had not died along with the rest of him. He wanted nothing more than to protect her, to guard her from the disgusting warm ones who would imprison her in their cutting-houses and dissect her, to eliminate this debilitating sadness that caused her to be wracked with such inexplicable pain, and he could not.

Gore could not even provide her shuddering body with warmth, as his own carcass was completely devoid of it.

The implacable monster was, at this time, without a force to be placed against, and all his strength was worthless to console a dead girl. The feeling filled him with rage enough to slaughter a thousand humans, but there was not a one to slay.

Gore lifted his great cleaver and struck a magnificent blow to the bridge, blowing a large chunk of concrete into bits and dust, and roared mindlessly at the sky until he began to choke on the torn flesh of his own throat.


	4. Chapter 4

"It is plain to see, no doubt by the personal experience of every American, that these creatures are what we perceive them to be…they are ravenous, mindless things, capable of feeling only hunger and seeking only death. Our only salvation…can be the utter destruction of this unholy blight upon the human species, this sin against God himself…" _– Televangelist Dick Whetherman, from his rebuttal to liberal "Zombie Rights" groups_

***

Blood had finally fallen asleep, though doing so was an ability that zombies did not commonly possess.

Unable to find another use for himself, Gore had sat himself under the bridge and cradled her awkwardly in his arms, where she had steadily grown still over the last two hours. Her breathless body now laid perfectly still in his thickly muscled arms, causing her to appear as if she were truly dead, though from her smell he could still tell she was not.

The moon still hung serenely in the sky; morning would not come for several hours. Gore could smell the misfortune on the air, though…it would not be wise to remain in this place for much longer, if the humans still sought after them. He disliked the idea of waking his mate so soon after she had gained respite from her suffering, but the open vulnerability of their position afforded nothing but danger.

Moving stiffly, Gore managed to get to his feet without dropping the dead-sleeping girl onto the ground. Immediately standing to his full height, Gore cracked the back of his head soundly against the concrete roof of the bridge, but felt no pain. He muttered a soft curse at his own size, ducked slightly, and made his way to less constraining ground.

Even with his limited vision, Gore could perceive his most immediate surroundings; the road they had been underneath stretched far in both directions, while desolate fields of short gray grass seemed to cover all else in a far-stretching plain, marked only by the road and the shallow, snaking trough that was the remains of the dry stream. He sniffed the air, searching for indication of anything other than the endless flatness, and almost barked in surprise when he detected the scent of trees to the east; enough trees, it smelled like, to constitute a small forest.

Without hesitation, he turned and started into a heavy-footed jog towards the east. His boots smashed dead blades of grass down as he went, leaving an obvious trail of large prints in the landscape. He was not entirely (or even vaguely) sure what the place was he was headed for, but trees would provide more shelter from human eyes than nothing.

Gore ran for a solid forty minutes before his path led him to the edge of the forest, where he slowed his pace. Luckily, being dead took away the need to catch his breath, or even to rest, and he continued forward past the tree line. Shadows of the trees' branches stretched out to swallow him from the moon's watchful eye as Gore made his way into the thick array of shrubbery.

The hulking zombie shouldered his way through the forest until it felt as if he had ventured deep enough to deter any human pursuit and stopped in a small clearing.

It became immediately apparent that this had been a bad idea.

The moment Gore stopped moving, he heard the sounds his own footfalls had muffled: the soft clatter of the wind through dry leaves, the swaying of the branches above…and the muted sounds of movement coming from all around him. He tried to face its source, but whatever created the noise had already surrounded him completely.

The vertebrae in Gore's neck clicked and ground as he turned, now swinging his arm downward to present the fearful blade that hung at the end of his wrist. The sounds did not desist, but added to themselves a low cacophony of animalistic hisses. Such noises caused him to be taken aback for a moment; they were certainly not those of humans-

"Do not be angry, my [love]." A small voice said.

Gore looked down in surprise at Blood, finding her to be conscious once more. Her pallid face was, as always, without expression, but calm serenity filled her red eyes. She gestured towards the woods with her one small hand.

"I think that they are friends." She moaned.

Gore turned his face upward just as his pursuers came into sight. The creatures shifted from the shadows as if they were ethereal beings just now choosing to materialize. Their faces were mostly covered by either mops of long, filthy hair or hoods connected to jackets on their backs. They crept forward on all fours like predatory, quadrapedal animals, and their harshly bent legs were thickly muscled. Finally, it could be seen that the creatures' hands had rotted into dirty claws, as the skin had been worn away from their fingers, leaving only sinew and sharp bone.

Along with the sight, Gore could at once recognize the creatures for their smell – the odor of death, rot, and hunger slid off of them in greasy claws. They were zombies, and appeared to be what the humans referred to as "wolves"; communal creatures that hunted in packs much more organized than the horde. It had even been said that they had been able to begin to derive nutrition from the meat of animals, rather than that of humans.

The wolves stared up at Gore's intimidating height with beady eyes that glowed iridescently from beneath their hair and hoods, for not one of the crouched zombies' faces were completely uncovered. One of them even appeared to be wearing one of the humans' infection masks, from back when they had assumed it would protect them from what they called a "disease". They continued to vocalize in guttural growls and hisses, but these sounds born of interest, not of threat.

Gore dropped his arm gradually, allowing Blood to slide to the ground so that she could stand on her own bloodied feet. The wolves regarded her with curiosity, and the one wearing the mask (the smallest of the group) even crept forward slightly to observe her more closely. Gore gave him a threatening look, and he retreated indifferently.

Just then, another figure emerged from the underbrush just before them. If the smell had not assured Gore that it was a fellow zombie, the figure's appearance would have provoked him to attack immediately; the thing looked almost entirely human.

The figure that came forth was of a man, dressed in an only slightly dirty gray suit, complete with a tie that hung, albeit clumsily, from his neck. Dirty red hair rose from his scalp in a severe widow's peak above a pair of large aviator sunglasses that obscured his eyes. His skin didn't even appear like that of a zombie's, as it was only slightly paler than that of an average human. For just a moment, the man's appearance caused Gore to doubt his own nose.

Then the man in the gray suit took a hand from his pocket, put it to his face, and removed the sunglasses. Blood let out a little wail of surprise as his eyes, strange, purple things that appeared as dead as the rest of his body did not, slid sideways to meet her own. That was when the gray-suited thing did something that no other zombie had ever managed to do.

He grinned.

His face split open awkwardly, but not entirely unconvincingly, to reveal two rows of yellow, slightly sharpened teeth. Except for his eyes, the zombie looked for a moment like a friendly, slightly drunk human. To Blood, the expression looked somewhat frightening. She was so stunned by the zombie's countenance that she didn't even move when he stepped forward, took her claw in his hand, and dipped his head forward, touching his lips to the back of her hand as if to kiss it, but not actually doing so.

Gore jerked and grunted with a combination of surprise and sudden anger, and took a threatening step toward the outlandish zombie. The gray-suited creature looked up and released Blood's hand, but made no move to retreat. His purple eyes slid upward, lizard-like, to make contact with Gore's visor, and he extended a hand toward Gore's chest. The larger zombie just stared at him, feeling the closest he had been to dumbfounded since his own death.

After a moment of silence, the zombie withdrew his hand, took a step back, and bowed. At least, he attempted to; something in his back audibly snapped as he went down, and he was forced to wrench himself back up with an extremely disconcerting grimace on his face. Finally, he met Gore's gaze once more and moaned his salutation.

"Greetings, my friends." He said, his patently zombie voice offering a bit of comfort, "And, might I say that I am most glad to see you both among us."

"Do not greet us as if we are old warm friends, strange one." Gore growled uncertainly, pulling Blood a little closer. "Name yourself."

"Ah!" the zombie ejaculated, emitting a sound that was so human it caused Blood to wince, "I am known by many names among the humans, but I believe you may call me by my true name, which is [Ghost]. I think it well to be candid while among brothers and sisters."

"You look and speak so strangely, [Ghost]," Blood ventured, "why is this, I ask?"

Ghost looked Blood's way once more and smiled. She looked away.

"Young lady, I perceive that you are most watchful." He continued, gesturing towards his own wardrobe, "You see, I have been most blessed by whatever dark gods thought to bless our people with life anew. One might even say that-"

Ghost's sentence cut itself off suddenly and without warning, and it took both Gore and Blood a moment to realize that he was still speaking, though the constant opening and closing of his mouth made it obvious that it was not the zombie tongue with which he now conversed. In fact, the unintelligible sounds emitted from his mouth sounded suspiciously like something very familiar.

When Blood recognized it, her eyes bulged in amazement. Ghost regarded her coolly and closed his mouth, allowing her to speak.

"You…" she stuttered, a strange sound among the atonal moans of her language, "you speak the language of the humans?"

"Nearly fluently, [miss]." Ghost responded. "Enough for one to get by amongst them for long enough, anyway. I am afraid my 'accent', as they call it, still causes me to sound somewhat…I believe they call it 'drunk'." Ghost spoke the last word in human speech, as the zombie language contained no such term.

Gore and Blood continued to stare at Ghost as if he had just suggested that they all go and attempt to eat vegetables. A zombie who could understand human speech, much less _speak_ it, was completely unheard of. This, along with Ghost's disconcertingly human appearance and mannerisms, had stunned them both into…well, into dead silence. As they watched, he steepled his fingers together and spoke once more.

"But enough of such idleness, would not you say? I believe we should move quickly, if we are to meld the both of you our plans." Ghost cast a meaningful look at the wolves crouched roundabout, most of which growled or gave soft tooth-clicks of agreement.

"Plans?" Gore groaned. "What do you mean?"

Ghost turned his eyes back to face the giant. "The plans," he moaned, "by which we all may reach the [Necropolis]."

"The [Necropolis]?" Gore barked. "You speak as if you believe such a place exists! The humans' eyes are everywhere, as you should know better than any of us."

"What I know better than any of us," Ghost continued solemnly, "is that the humans press down upon us with increasing strength each passing day, and a place amongst one's brethren is more shelter than no place at all, which is exactly where you and I are, my large friend. The [Necropolis] is no bastion of security as the stories say, but it _does_ exist, in a place that few humans ever go, and many a strong [zombie] does indeed dwell there."

Gore stood silently for a moment, considering. He had long heard rumors of this Necropolis, but if it really did exist as Ghost said, bringing Blood there would be the most effective way to protect her. Gore looked down and laid his large hand on the side of her head, stroking her dirty hair clumsily. She looked up at his touch, shivering in the nighttime cold. Gore stared into her eyes for a long time, then turned back to Ghost.

"This plan you spoke of." He growled, "Tell us of it."

Ghost grinned.

"My friend, I shall be more than glad."


	5. Chapter 5

"For added safety, always be sure to follow these guidelines when going about your daily life:

Never share cleaning or beautification products,

Always keep doors tightly shut and locked while at home or otherwise,

Wash your hands whenever possible,

Avoid visibly unwell citizens, and

Never, ever stop to pick up or converse with hitchhikers or roadside travelers." _– from a public service announcement given in the early _

_months of the infection_

***

It was still in the early hours of the morning; the sun had only begun to rise, and the crisp smell of morning air whipped through the cabin of a large semi truck heading south, down F street. An outcropping of desolate buildings – houses, or maybe small offices – lined the street, but were thankfully empty; the wandering dead had already been cleared from this zone.

The truck was the last in a convoy of five, and the other four trundled along steadily ahead. Every trucked was stuffed with as many soldiers as could be packed into the limited cargo containers on the trucks' backs, and every soldier within was armed to the teeth. The troopers were meant to be reinforcements for zombie cleanup-crews in the south, past Wall G – a massively stretching concrete barrier lined with turrets and well-guarded gates for passage.

Up ahead, the road bent to the right just before a long, straight stretch that went on for several miles. Truck No. 1 turned, as did 2 and 3. No. 4 was just beginning to corner when someone stumbled from behind one of the roadside buildings.

"Holy-" the driver gasped, jamming the brakes as the man almost staggered into the road. The man took notice and hurriedly stepped back as the truck pulled to a screeching stop next to him. The soldier riding shotgun looked at the man out of the side window, scanning him up and down as he did so.

It was just some guy in a crumpled gray suit; nothing to special about him except for the fact that he was wearing sunglasses, which was odd this early in the morning. It also seemed strange that he would be so far out of the way by himself, but then again, he did look pretty lost. And they'd been ordered to stop for any civilians, so…

The soldier rolled down his window and beckoned for the man in the gray suit to come over. The man gave a hesitant little wave in return and jogged up to the window.

"Need a lift, man?" the soldier asked, tapping the rim of his window. "Zone's supposed to be clear, but y'can never tell with these zombies, right?" The soldier smirked and turned to give the driver a little punch in the shoulder.

"No," the man in the suit said as he reached into the cabin, "You never can."

Since he was looking the other way as Ghost's hand slowly hovered into the cabin, the soldier was only able to react just as the hand took hold of his neck. His own hands jumped upward, but were unable to find purchase before Ghost calmly ripped out his throat.

The soldier in the passenger seat's face took on a very unique expression of surprise as he choked and gurgled, slapping at the waterfall of blood flowing from his mutilated neck. The driver panicked and began to fumble for his sidearm. After a moment of frenzied groping, he managed to unclip the holster's catch and drew his pistol towards Ghost's face.

The zombie in the gray suit grinned and stepped out of the driver's vision, leaving him to squeeze off a harmless shot as he disappeared.

The only soldier still alive in the truck's cabin sat silently for a second or two, breathing heavily and shaking like an old washing machine, pistol still jitteringly trained on the empty window. The sound of exploding glass behind him caused the soldier to turn. Time began to slog though molasses as tiny shards of crystal showered the back of his neck; he had nearly turned his head when an enormous hand wrapped around his skull and dragged his body through the broken window.

In truck No. 5's storage compartment, the sound of a gunshot easily pierced the thin metal walls. The uneasiness the soldiers within had felt at the sudden had turned, now, into a fully alert sense of danger and the troops wasted no time in getting to their feet and flicking off the safeties of their collective rifles.

The sergeant, who sat at the very back of the vehicle, bent down to release the catch-lever of the door. The gate swung downward unabated and crashed into the concrete below, churning up dust and deafening sound as the soldiers began to file out and hustle down its length. The men kept their guns up and ready as they ran, sweeping their sights outward to survey their surroundings even while blinking at the light that had begun to spill over the horizon.

Shouts of "Clear!" could be heard even as the last soldier's boots made first contact with the ground, but it would only moments before the signals would be revealed as false.

A private by the name of Hennings rubbed his eyes sleepily as he exited the truck. He had fallen soundly asleep while in transit, so the world around him still appeared as a blurry haze. When Hennings looked upward at the roof of the vehicle he had been peacefully dozing in just a few minutes earlier, he was not immediately able to discern the identity of the strange, hunched shapes perched just above the storage container's opening.

Private Hennings brought his rifle up bear just as one of the shapes let out a feral screech and shot at him as if had been fired from a cannon. The thing hit him with the force of a football tackle given by an exceptionally large player, blowing the private off of his feet and knocking his rifle from his hands. Hennings's back was slammed unmercifully into the concrete, knocking the wind out of him. As he began to gasp for breath, the thing on top of him opened a mouth full of knife-edged teeth and went for his throat.

At the wolf's first cry, the entirety of Hennings's company whipped around towards its source. The first thing most of them saw was their comrade being knocked to the ground, and such was their first concern; several of the soldiers managed to lay their sights across the private's attacker when they were interrupted by their own, similar fates.

The zombies perched on the back of the truck – the wolves, as they were called – sprung forward into the crowd of humans, targeting those that aimed at their brother. The wolves' muscular hind legs allowed them to pounce with astonishing speed and force, as they showed as their bullet-quick bodies hammered into the soldiers' torsos, shattering bone even before driving them into the ground. There had been at least fifteen of the undead predators hunkered atop the vehicle, and every one shot forward simultaneously; those humans that were hit directly were immediately knocked to the ground while those nearby stumbled backwards, disoriented and confused.

The wolves' sharp bone-claws were put to good use even before the humans had been pinned. The zombies leapt forward with their hands outstretched, using the force of their flight to ram the points deep into their victim's bodies and their remaining momentum to rip out large chunks of flesh upon landing. When their prey had been put down, the wolves immediately set upon them with claws and teeth, ripping away at armor to expose the meat underneath or going straight for the exposed necks and faces of the screaming men.

Of those humans that were left standing, only a few had the wherewithal to attempt to shoot something. One man fired on a female wolf who had already busied herself with removing an unlucky soldier's sternum, sending a burst of lead shredding through her midsection and knocking her off of her victim. She looked up at him and snarled viciously, making her face an easy target which the soldier happily sighted upon. Just before he pulled the trigger, though, two larger wolves flitted from their own prey towards him. The human soldier flipped as his shoulders and legs were knocked in two different directions. His head struck the asphalt while he was still upside-down, cracking his skull in three places and quickly ending his life.

The area behind truck No. 5 had quickly become a chaotic frenzy of violence; blood and organs flew in every direction, propelled through the air by the claws of ravenous zombies, while the terrified screams of humans and bloodthirsty screeches of the undead punctured the air. Just then, a much deeper bellow of rage blew through the minds of all present.

An eight-foot corpse came around the left side of the human vehicle in an unstoppable rush of weight, slamming into an erect human with its shoulder and sending him tumbling into a broken heap some twenty feet away. The dwindling number of soldiers who were still on their feet immediately turned their attention toward it, lighting up the gigantic form with as firepower as they could.

Gore crouched, placing the broad side of his cleaver in front of his face to protect it as the humans' bullets lodged themselves harmlessly in the rest of his body. Emitting another inhuman roar, the huge zombie pushed forward with his own version of the wolves' tackle. The soldier closest to Gore shouted something and earnestly attempted to empty his gun into the colossal creature. Gore turned and stampeded forward, giving his cleaver a thunderous shove as he made contact with the human and knocking him to the ground. The human made a funny noise as he hit the ground, and in a moment Gore was upon him. The zombie placed his hand against the human's back, lifted his cleaver, and chopped the man neatly in two like a huge, undead butcher.

A second soldier came up behind Gore, firing uselessly into his back. Gore spun, knife-hand outstretched, and caught the man at the knees, breaking both instantly. He dropped, potato-sack like, and Gore kicked his brains across the street. When he looked up again, the sounds and smells of the air told him that the battle had nearly concluded; few human voices could still be heard, and even fewer were accompanied by the angry rattling of their guns.

To his right, Gore heard a soldier screaming in his repugnant human language and firing randomly into the zombies nearby. The brute looked down and found what he was looking for; a few feet away, the small wolf with the infection mask was happily pulling out an already dead man's intestines. Gore took a step forward, grabbed the zombie by his chest, and hurled it at the annoying human. The little wolf sailed through the air, shrieking gleefully, and blew the human away. Without missing a beat, the zombie-turned-projectile ripped into his prey anew.

In a matter of seconds later, it was over. The sounds of human fear and the smell of human life was gone from the air at last, and the zombies scattered about began to reassemble themselves. Disemboweled human corpses lay strewn about like dirty laundry, and their delicious scent pervaded the air. Fortunately, there had been no casualties among the undead; destruction of the brain was required for that, and none of the humans had been able to secure a headshot in the broil. Many of the wolves had been wounded, but very few severely so; the first wolf who had been shot, the female, was happily feasting on the face of the human who had attacked her. The two males who had protected her came nearby, though whether they were concerned for her wound or just trying to get some food themselves was unsure. She growled, either angrily or playfully, as they approached, scaring the two away.

Just then, Ghost sauntered around the right side of the truck, making motions with his lips as if he was attempting to whistle but unable to actually do so. His arm was draped over little Blood's shoulders, and he was forced to walk slightly slower to compensate for her shuffling steps. Blood surveyed the carnage hungrily until she noticed Gore, and her eyes brightened with recognition. Ghost removed his hand, freeing her to stride to Gore's side, smearing blood across the ground as she did so. Gore took her by the shoulders as soon as she was in arm's reach, pulling her small body against his chest as he spoke to Ghost.

"I see you chose to keep yourself from the human's bullets, [Ghost]." He groaned, a hint of mocking in his throaty voice.

Ghost looked up in surprise, removed his sunglasses, and gave another disarmingly human grin. "Indeed, [brother], but you must allow me to submit that I have fulfilled my duty to the letter."

"I am unharmed." Blood moaned into Gore's jacket, simply affirming Ghost's statement. Gore looked down at her and touched the back of her head with one finger.

"It is true." He growled, turning back to Ghost. "And I thank you for that, strange one."

Ghost took the time to attempt another bow, and actually succeeded this time. "Anything for the young lady." He sighed in the zombie speech.

Ghost turned his attention back to the wolves, most of which were looking at him expectantly. Though he was not one of their pack, he seemed to have established himself rather securely as the wolves' leader, and from what Blood and Gore had observed of him, he seemed a trustworthy friend…despite his similarity in appearance to the humans.

"[Brothers] and [sisters]," he cried, addressing the entire group, "I applaud you all. We have struck a blow to the humans, indeed, and we are one step closer to our goal. You may eat if you have need, but I ask that we save as many bodies as we can as supplies for those living in the [Necropolis]." Ghost was met by a cacophony of tooth-clicks in response, and a few wolves immediately set themselves to dragging the bodies into the trailer.

When Ghost had finished his speech, Blood removed herself from Gore's side to speak to him. Gore let her go, but followed close behind.

"[Brother Ghost]," Blood moaned, "What must we do now? How are we to use the humans' mechanical creature for ourselves?"

Ghost turned, smiling again – Gore wondered momentarily if that was the only expression he could simulate – and clapped his hands together. "Why, my dear [Blood], I intend to do with it as the humans do, of course."

Blood regarded him uncertainly for a moment, as if waiting for Ghost to realize the error of his statement and recant. When he did not, she said, "Surely, you do not mean that you wish intend to _drive_ it?"

"That is precisely what I intend to do. I believe that a bit of camouflage will be quite expedient in our traversing the [Great Gate]." Ghost replied.

***

A few minutes later, the street had been cleared of most of the evidence of the struggle; the bodies as well as most of their limbs had been cleared away and placed in the truck's trailer, though gallons of blood still stained the asphalt. Blood sat on the lip of the container's gate, nibbling the fingers off of a hand, while Gore stood nearby, watching. Ghost was speaking to a trio of wolves, though he was too far away from Blood and Gore to decipher what he was saying. The wolves clicked their acknowledgement and bounded away, apparently to spread his message to the rest of their pack.

Ghost smiled and walked over to Gore, who regarded him silently. Blood would have listened in on their conversation had not the small wolf with the infection mask – Short-claw, she had learned his name was – crawled up to her and pulled the mask from his face to curiously lick her bloody toes. Blood let out what sounded like a sad, wailing giggle and kicked him gently in the face.

"My [friend]," Ghost said, loud enough that Gore could hear but Blood could not, "I must ask your permission for something."

"Go on."

"In order for my plan to succeed, we must fool the humans into believing we are of them for as long as possible. In order to do so, we must have two disguised [zombies] in the front of the vehicle, disguised as the human warriors, yes?"

Gore glared at him for a moment. "I think you are right." He finally growled.

"Good. Now, I understand, my large [friend], that your connection with the young lady is strong. That is why I wish to ask you if I may use her as my passenger."

Gore huffed with annoyance at the suggestion. "Why? Why do you wish to place her in harm's way, strange one?" Gore lifted himself up to his full height as he spoke.

"Quite simply, [brother], no one else will do. None of our [wolf brethren] are able to sit erect in the humans' nests, and you are much too large to even fit inside the window box."

Gore stood silently for a moment, then turned toward his mate. Blood was nipping at the thumb of the hand, and when she turned to meet his gaze, the thing hung like a meaty spider from her lips. Gore stroked her filthy hair; his hand dwarfed her head, but the awkward difference in the two's size did not subtract from the motion's meaning. Blood purred and chewed on her breakfast.

"Very well." Gore grumbled, turning back to Ghost. "If you may guarantee her safety, you may do what you must."

"Spectacular!" Ghost cried, trying to give a thumbs-up with his hands and ending up doing something very different. "I shall make us ready for departure immediately."

"Do so." Gore growled. "I wish to free of this place."


	6. Chapter 6

"What we have here, gentlemen, is no random mistake of genetics. It is the infection, the virus itself that has changed, and which has caused these inexplicable advances in the zombie species. As you have seen, these creatures are faster, stronger, and far more intelligent than early infected hosts, and that _is _frightening – but it may also be something more.

Members of the board, I submit that these creatures may not simply be more intelligent than their predecessors, but perhaps more rational as well…rational enough, maybe, to be reached through negotiation…" _– Jonathan Elmes, from his speech on the nature of the undead species, three months before he would be imprisoned for treason_

***

Truck No. 5 was back on the road, and quickly moving on its way toward reuniting with the rest of the convoy. From far off, there was no discernable difference in the truck's appearance; closer inspection, though, would have revealed the broken driver's side window and the fact that the back gate seemed to be leaking blood onto the highway.

In the cabin, two figures dressed in military fatigues sat unassumingly; one wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses, the other a hat pulled down low to cover her eyes. The girl's clothes were overly large and baggy on her, and the cuffs of her long pant legs were quickly beginning to soak with blood – beyond that, her right sleeve was completely empty of an arm.

Behind the driver's cabin, several zombies crouched among the bodies of the dead. The corpses of soldiers lay heaped at the front of the storage compartment, while Gore and the wolves sat hunkered in the remaining space. Rivulets of blood ran down the floor to the back of the truck, where it had begun to leak onto the road, and the entire container was filled with its thick, intoxicating stench. A wolf bent to partake of a small pool of blood that had formed at his feet, lapping at the liquid with his tongue as a cat would drink a bowl of milk.

Gore didn't like it back there. For a zombie of his size, the space was tight and cramped; his body longed to be outside, moving, running, killing something. In such an enclosed space, he felt helpless and stifled, and the smell of the dead humans lying about was absolutely maddening.

Back in the cabin, Ghost and Blood stared nervously though the windshield at the rest of the convoy. Ghost had soundly proven his skill at piloting the human vehicle – most zombies couldn't even properly operate a doorknob – but even so, he had to fight to keep the truck from weaving drunkenly across the road, which would arouse the humans' suspicion before it was time.

Blood shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She wasn't used to these human chairs, and the frustration she felt boiling out of Gore raised the hair on the back of her neck. She knew, as they all did, that their path led basically through the strongest of the humans' defenses – hopefully, Ghost's plan involved some sort of solution to that problem. The only hint of the gray suited zombie's intent was his activities with the wolves; just before their departure, he had given a signal which had caused the entire pack to emit a high, echoing scream.

In the present, Ghost continued to fight with the steering wheel. Suddenly, he took a hand off of the wheel – at great cost to the vehicle's maneuverability – and gave two quick knocks to the back of the cabin.

Back in the storage container, the sound of Ghost's knuckles rapping against the wall echoed through the cramped space. The zombies crouched around Gore looked up in response to the sound, passing their growling speech amongst themselves, and began to move. A few of the creatures crawled to the base of the gate and pulled the catch. The door groaned and began to fall, but the wolves did not allow it to drop onto the pavement. Those nearest to the door stretched out to catch the edges, halting its descent before the gate could crash into the ground. Those left not holding the door quickly clustered around the opening, lifted their heads, and screamed. Every wolf cried out in unison, letting loose a terrible roaring screech that filled the storage compartment and burst into the outside air in an echoing death-song.

Gore grunted with surprise, but otherwise watched the ceremony quietly. When they had finished, the wolves pulled the door shut once more, latched it, and returned to their resting positions. Gore remembered how the small zombies had made a similar sound some time earlier, and wondered how the periodic fits of screaming would enter into Ghost's "plan". Gore was a stubborn zombie; he still wasn't entirely sure he trusted the zombie who pretended to be a human, and being unable to see Blood for so long was beginning to aggravate him more than being stuck in a tiny box ever could.

"You there," he growled gloomily, "female."

The wolf with the fresh bulletholes across her midsection, whose name was Fleet, looked up when Gore called upon her. Her glowing orange eyes crept across his mask expectantly from beneath her bedraggled brown hair.

"Why do you jumping ones make such sounds?" He continued. "What purpose do you serve?"

Fleet stared back at him for a moment, pulling her lip up and away from her sharp teeth thoughtfully.

"You shall see." She whispered simply, and turned to lick a bit of blood from the container's floor.

Gore grumbled something to himself and fell silent once more.

***

About forty-five minutes later, the convoy's destination began to come into sight. The wall stretched horizontally across the horizon as a tiny black line that grew steadily as the convoy approached. The thing seemed to stretch endlessly from one side of the world to the other, and small bumps protruded systematically from the top edge, housing the numerous turret emplacements – complete with ammunition to last until slightly after the end of time – that could cut a zombie into several small pieces in a very short amount of time.

Ghost craned his neck to get a better view of where he was headed. Directly in the convoy's path was a tiny gap in the wall, just big enough for each of the trucks to pass through if they drove in single file. A fairly simple chain-link fence filled the space, forming a gate that could be rolled to one side in order to allow the trucks to pass. This represented a serious weakness in the wall's defenses, as evidenced by the series of clustered structures and embattlements that had been placed around its opening. Human soldiers bumbled to and fro about the area like so many insects.

Ghost gritted his teeth and took his eyes off of the road for a moment to cast a look at Blood. She had, miraculously, fallen asleep, and bloody tears had begun to drip down her cheeks once more. Ghost had to be careful, which was a difficult thing for a creature of his nature to do; if he got too close to the humans before it was time, the girl could easily be identified, and then they'd all be…well, more dead than they already were.

He found himself sincerely hoping that the wolves' call would work as he had planned it all out. They had conducted the exercise once more just a little while ago, making three times in all, so if it was going to work at all, they'd done all that would be needed. All they could do now was wait.

After a few more minutes of driving, the convoy slowed as truck No. 1 pulled up to the checkpoint. Soldiers swarmed from the bunkers nearby as the truck's gate fell open, revealing the men within. The driver, as well as his passenger, presented their ID cards as well as the proper documentation, and the truck was finally closed up again and sent through the gate.

Ghost was unable to see most of this process, but he didn't need many details to know that in a few minutes, they would be discovered. He tapped his cold fingers against the steering wheel, and was just about to wake his sleeping passenger when her eyes snapped open on their own.

Blood sat bolt upright as if electricity had been channeled through her spine. Her crimson eyes darted across the scene before her, then turned to light upon Ghost's face. He could not feel his grip tighten on the wheel as she looked at him, but he could feel the cause – the look in the girl's wide eyes made his blood feel thin and watery.

Before Ghost could think to say anything, Blood's eyes shifted again and she moaned something quietly to herself.

"What was that?" Ghost asked hesitantly. "I did not hear-"

Blood's icy gaze turned back toward him, and Ghost choked.

"They are coming," she moaned, "All of them." Blood's voice was hollow and cold, resembling more the voice of someone truly dead than someone just undead. Slowly, she closed her eyes and opened them again, a fresh gout of blood spilling down her cheeks. "[Ghost]…what have you done?"

Ghost gagged silently, and the steering wheel made a strange sound. He looked down dizzily and found that a sizeable chunk of the circular device had broken off in his hands. And that was when he heard it.

A rumbling, lifeless howl groaned its way across the sky, seeping through the open air and echoing off of every available surface. The sound resembled something like a distant thunderstorm moving in on the wind, but one composed of a thousand hungry voices screaming in unison.

The truck's rearview mirror caught Ghost's eye and he glanced into it. Far behind the convoy, the horizon had grown dark, as if some sort of foul smog had begun to creep over the curve of the earth. The sound of raging voices began to grow in the distance, rising in pitch and intensity as its source grew nearer. The smog grew thicker as shapes began to resolve themselves from it; hundreds, maybe thousands of bodies, sprinting towards the wall at full tilt and roaring for blood.

Up ahead, the whites of the humans' eyes shown in the morning sunlight. Those soldiers whose jaws had not already gone slack were running back to their bunkers or shouting orders to the others. The other trucks in the convoy opened and spilled their human contents, who fled similarly to the protection of the concrete and machine guns.

There was no time to notice that no one exited truck No. 5. Inside, the wolves snarled and barked with satisfaction – just as had been planned, their calls had attracted every zombie for miles. Thousands of mindless grays – as well as quite a few of the more advanced infected, had come from every available direction, attracted by the sound of the wolves' screams and the smell of the blood dripping from truck No. 5's back end.

"[Ghost]," Blood moaned, beginning to slump oddly, "we must go, now."

The sound outside had grown to a practically deafening level; the horde had almost overtaken them. The humans would not fire until the zombies ran into their range, but that would most certainly be any second now. Ghost watched a zombie stumble by his window as Gore's voice boomed through the wall behind them and into the cabin.

"_MOVE!_" He roared, and Ghost jammed the gas pedal to the floor.

The truck's tires squealed to life and jolted the cabin forward before they caught the asphalt and pulled the rest of the vehicle into motion. Truck No. 4 surged toward them, threatening to fill the windshield, and Ghost cranked the broken steering wheel to the left. The truck turned, but did so at such a steep angle that the trailer tilted to one side, threatening to roll the entire truck. Then the side of the trailer connected with the back of the truck in front of them.

The artery-hardening sound of metal shearing against metal ripped through the truck as the vehicles met. Sparks and bits of shrapnel shot into the air as the trailers slid against one another, ripping a jagged gash in the side of No. 5 until gravity kicked back into gear and its wheels bounced back to the ground.

The truck rebounded, swayed, and surged forward with renewed vigor.

Outside, the humans' machine guns rattled their greeting to the encroaching undead masses. Rivers of hot lead poured themselves through the air and hosed down the closest of the zombies. The first gray to be hit took a shot in the left shoulder, which blew his arm off completely and sent the rest of his body into a tumbling spin. A second stream of bullets caught him as he fell, and his body exploded into a small cloud of fine red mist.

Blood cried out and clutched at her stomach, almost ripping a hole in the camouflaged material covering her midriff. Ghost barely took notice; he was busy trying not to drive into anything solid before they made it through the wall. He hunched forward over the dashboard, letting his sunglasses slide down his nose to reveal his wide violet eyes. A clatter of gunfire blew a zombie into a small collection of parts ahead of him, and the windshield was quickly splattered with blood and what looked like a kidney.

The shrieking, sprinting crowd had begun to thicken around the truck, and the turrets placed along the wall spat fire with increasing frequency. Dirt and blood flew into the air in copious amounts as wave after wave of zombies was reduced to chunks and paste, but the main body of their numbers had not begun to draw near. The wall had not been built to withstand this sort of assault; hordes of this size were practically nonexistent on their own.

Ghost fought madly to keep the truck moving in a semi-straight line as the trailer swayed and bumped over the dismembered bodies still trying to crawl towards the gate. He did not notice that Blood, who had been screaming like someone going through an amputation without anesthesia, had doubled almost entirely over in her seat, retching dryly with pain and staring at the blood that gushed from her eyes and nose and pooled in her lap.

In one of the turret nests, a somewhat intelligent human noticed the semi plowing towards the gate, and intuited the potential danger that would be posed if it should break through the gate. The soldier quickly turned his fire upon the truck's cabin, not actually knowing who was currently piloting the vehicle.

Light pierced truck No. 5's cabin, shattering the windshield and spraying the interior with glass. Bullets swept across both passengers, punching holes in the thin metal behind them and blowing white, cottony stuffing from the seats. Had Blood been sitting upright, the spray would most likely have cut her cleanly in half; as it was, the stream missed her completely. Ghost, however, was not quite as lucky.

The gray-suited zombie's body was blown backward by the force of the turret's fire, pushing him back into his seat and ripping his hands away from the steering wheel, which chose that moment to rip out of its column completely and spin through the broken window. Ghost's chest was blown open as the bullets plowed through his body; bits of his own organs and ribcage spattered across his sunglasses, effectively blinding him as the truck rammed forward out of control.

Near the front of the zombie horde, a dark shape flitted out from the formation with incredible speed. The thing was unidentifiable as anything more than a greasy black smear in the air, and moved so quickly that it was almost impossible to follow with the naked eye. The shape skimmed across the distance to the wall, met the structure itself, and kept going…straight up. It left a zigzagging trail of oily streaks as it climbed the wall, met the opening of the turret that had fired on Ghost's truck and paused to reach inside. For just a moment, the shape became clear; it was a zombie wearing what looked like an oily black ghillie suit, or just some sort of thick clothing that had been shredded completely beyond recognition. The thing's claw shot into the confined space, sunk its talons into the surprised soldier's face, and tore off his face.

Then, as soon as the zombie appeared, it was gone, leaving only black sludge as evidence of its existence.

A wave of grays smashed into the wall as their numbers grew to levels the turrets could not handle. A hailstorm of bullets flew from every window and opening in the wall, as well as the embattlements placed around it, but it was not enough. For every zombie that fell, a dozen more rushed forward to replace it, and those who had met the wall had already begun to attempt to climb it. Those in front scrabbled and scraped at the concrete, while those behind began to climb on top of those in front. Zombies as large as Gore charged the bunkers, using crude clubs or their own limbs to smash at the cement walls. A pack of wolves galloped forward and sprung onto the roof of one of the bunkers, then began to use their bone-claws to tear at the metal hatches meant to be escape routes.

And amongst all the madness, truck No. 5 careened forward, driverless, through the tightly clustered bodies, through the engine block of No. 2, and through the gate. The weak chain-link structure blew off of its hinges as the truck slammed through it and caught the back of its trailer on the edge of the concrete wall.

With that, truck No. 5 finally jerked, tipped, and fell to one side, bursting into a recklessly tumbling fireball as the trailer blew apart and the zombie horde poured through the wall.


	7. Chapter 7

"This war, my boys, is already over – it's just a matter of waiting until the rest of these saps realize it. We're killin' these things faster'n they can kill us, yeah, but that ain't the point. The infected – zombies, like ev'rybody calls 'em – they ain't built to survive. They can't build, they can't farm, they can't think – hell, they can't even reproduce 'cept by killin' us.

They got nowhere left to go, boys, and we're runnin' 'em down." _– General Patrick South, Commander of the U.S. Army, in a speech to his troops concerning the "Zombie War" _

***

Smoke rose in apathetic curls from the crumpled heap of metal that had once been truck No. 5. A soft rain had begun to fall soon after the crash, and the fires that had sprung from the semi's engine block had receded almost to the point of nonexistence. Somewhere inside, jammed deep into the corner of a crumpled mess of glass and slag that had once been the truck's cabin, something dead opened its eyes.

The first sight that greeted it when it did so was the blood smeared across its vision, allowing it to see only red-tinted light and blurred shapes. The dead thing raised a hand and grabbed at its face, trying to rid itself of the obstruction. After a few moments of clumsy groping, a solid swat of its hand sent a pair of gore-encrusted aviator's sunglasses spinning off of the dead thing's face and into some nook in the cabin, never to be seen again.

With his eyes uncovered, Ghost could finally see the chaos surrounding him. He was lying against what had been the broken driver's side window, his back bent at an angle that would have had a human screaming in agony and making odd little cracking noises. He managed to bend his neck enough to look down at himself, and found that his nice gray suit had been utterly destroyed, not to mention his chest underneath it. Many of Ghost's insides had rapidly been exported to his outsides by the turret; the organs around his sternum had been pulped into unrecognizability, while some of the lower ones had simply been exposed to the air. A glistening coil of intestine hung forlornly from the hole in his chest; for a moment, he attempted – and failed – to tuck it back into his abdomen.

Ghost sighed and looked up at the sky, but was startled to find that his view was blocked by a body that hung limply from its seatbelt like a forgotten marionette. Red liquid covered her face and clothes, though it was unclear whether all of it was hers or not.

Ghost tried to speak, but found that the position he was stuck in – as well as the fact that his lungs had recently been perforated – made his voice thin and wheezy. Blood's body swung indifferently as rain drizzled through the window above her, washing the sanguine fluid from her face, where it dripped down onto Ghost's mangled form.

Ghost could hear voices outside, but he was too dazed to understand their meaning. Another sound soon greeted his ears, though – the creaking of overstressed metal as a great force attempted to bend it out of shape. A groaning bellow of exertion could be heard as something very large strained to tip the cabin over, and Ghost watched as bits of metal fell from unknown cracks while gravity shifted beneath him. The cabin gave one last creak of protest and began to tip.

Outside, Gore shifted his grip to keep the ruined cabin from simply dashing itself to pieces against the ground. Muscles in his arms bulged and popped as he guided the truck's front end ever so gently to the earth, then dropped it the last few inches with a bouncing jolt.

Without wasting another moment, Gore ripped the passenger's side door off of its hinges and tossed it aside like a frisbee. Using his cleaver, he broke the constraints holding Blood in her seat and pulled her lifeless body from the cabin.

Ghost had not thought to put on a seatbelt, so as soon as he was able to dislodge himself from the wreckage, he began to crawl toward the now-open portal. He had not made it halfway when Gore's huge hand came back, grabbed him by the back of his jacket, and yanked him into the open air. Ghost tumbled from the cabin, hit the ground, and skidded through a patch of bloody mud.

Ghost sat up quickly and began to take stock of his surroundings. The first thing he noticed was the truck they had rode in on, which looked like it had very few prospects of ever being a truck again. The cabin he had been sitting in was smoking and half-crushed, while the trailer just looked like an aluminum can that had gone through a blender. Crumpled, razor-sharp edges jutted in all directions, and the bodies of the soldiers that had been stored inside had been thrown from the trailer and scattered by the impact.

Ghost turned his eyes from the wreck and looked back at the wall. Multitudes of zombies swarmed through the gateless gap, hooting and screaming as they came. The muted, staccato sound of gunfire could still be heard here and there, but from the silence in between, it sounded like most of the humans were already dead. Something exploded with a muffled _thump_ on the other side of the wall, sending a billowing plume of smoke into the sodden air.

Ghost heard a soft shuffling sound and turned toward it. The female wolf, Fleet, stumbled up to him and began to lick softly at the gaping hole in his chest, almost falling into his lap as she did so. Her left leg had been broken halfway down the thigh in the crash, and though she was incapable of feeling pain, the dragging limb made it harder for her to move about. The rest of her pack had gathered around, but it was obvious that the crash had taken its toll on them, as well; several had incurred debilitating wounds, and a few were missing entirely.

Ghost stroked the little zombie's head as a human would pet a dog and, with a bit of effort, pushed himself to his feet. Suddenly, Gore stood before him, his massive body casting a shadow that completely engulfed Ghost. He looked up to meet the larger zombie's gaze, noting the numerous, deep gashes that had appeared across his body. Gore's wounds did not really bleed, but oozed a thick black substance that dried almost as soon as the air came in contact with it.

"Perhaps," Gore rumbled, "If I had known the nature of your plan, I would not have so easily accepted it."

Ghost began to feel strongly like Gore was getting ready to punt him back over the wall, but he did no such thing. Instead, the large zombie gestured back toward the cabin, where Blood sat alone. The most pained, horrified look Ghost had ever seen haunted her eyes, and her body was shaking violently.

"What has happened?" Ghost murmured nervously. "Is she [wounded]?"

Gore groaned unintelligibly and placed his hand on Ghost's shoulder, almost knocking him off of his feet the process.

"Fortunately for you, strange one," Gore moaned, "She is not. However, she will be unable to move on her own for a time." Ghost looked at Blood with confusion in his eyes and opened his mouth to speak, but stopped when Gore gave a quick motion with his cleaver. "You would not understand, and there is no time. We must find this [Necropolis] of yours before the humans send more of their fodder."

"Yes, yes," Ghost agreed, "It is not much farther, if no more humans should stumble upon us. I shall prepare our way, yes?"

"Do as you will." Gore muttered.

Ghost ran off to do whatever it was he thought should be done, and Gore shifted his attention back to the little zombie shivering by the destroyed vehicle. He walked softly up to her – no small feat while wearing boots as large as his – and knelt by her side. Blood's entire body was seized with fits of morbid shuddering, and though her eyes were open, she did not seem to recognize Gore as he approached. It was good that the humans had been overtaken as quickly as they had; he could not imagine what would have happened to the helpless girl's mind had more died back at the wall.

She would recover in time, he knew, but it hurt him deeply to see her like this, wracked with pain and suffering he could not relieve. For the hundredth time, he wished a painful death upon every human living for the things she was forced to experience, and scooped her body into his arms. She resisted stiffly for a brief moment, then went slack.

Ghost returned a few minutes later. The Necropolis, he said, was just a few miles away; within walking distance, certainly, but long enough to allow the humans to set upon them once more. The wolves – both those that had accompanied them in the truck and several more – would run ahead of them, attracting the more feral grays to act as a shield should anything unfortunate happen. There were still hundreds nearby, as well as several advanced infected who had decided to join them.

With that, the ramshackle group of dead people departed. The wolves sprinted ahead to act as gray-bait, leaving behind Fleet, who could now be outrun by the slowest of the infected. Ghost had just begun to imagine a way to help her along when the black, oily shape that had assisted them earlier reappeared by her side. Without a word, the thing stooped and lifted the smaller zombie onto its back. Fleet barked in surprise, but did not much attempt to struggle.

Far ahead, a screaming howl pierced the air. Every gray nearby swiveled in response, snapping at the air with their jaws, and headed toward the source of the sound. Gore, Blood, Ghost, and the strange black zombie with Fleet on its back merged with the horde and began their journey across the open field and toward an outcropping of tall, grey buildings.

***

An hour or so of walking later, the buildings they had seen came within reach. The horde moved steadily through paved streets, though by now every human had been gone for years. Finally, the wolves who had been guiding them came into view; they were crouched by the entrance of an old derelict subway entrance, where a broken-down concrete staircase led underneath the city. Gore's group left the gray horde to mill about aimlessly as they descended the steps into the cold darkness of the subway.

Inside, the subway appeared completely deserted. Greenish lights flickered here and there from the ceiling, and rusted railways lined what looked like an endlessly long, wide hallway. Ghost led the way through a smaller hall, and through an indecipherable series of twists and turns until they came to a dead end; a large room, filled with rough orange light and a twisted pile of scrap metal, blocked their path.

"What is this?" Gore growled, whipping his head from side to side. "There is nothing-"

Gore was cut off as the pile of scrap metal before them grunted and began to rise. Pieces of garbage and refuse tumbled off of the thing as it ascended, showing what it truly was; an enormous zombie, at least two heads taller than Gore, clad in armor that appeared to be constructed from old car parts. It reached its full height and scanned the group with eyes that shone dimly from inside a buick-grille helmet. Then, seeming satisfied with their state of death, the monstrous thing stood aside.

"Enter." Its voice rumbled from deep within its chest.

The group passed by slowly, casting furtive glances up at the guardian as they went. Just behind him was a long hallway ending in a single, knobless door. Ghost pushed it open, and the group stepped into the Necropolis.

The Necropolis, as it was called by many zombies, was not a city at all, but rather a maze of deserted subway tunnels that catacombed the underground of the entire city. Zombies of every kind looked toward the door as they entered; packs of wolves, huge heavies, slimy droolers who dripped with acrid goo that oozed from their pores, and things they had never seen before, as well as a number of grays who wandered mindlessly among the halls. Gore and his companions were still taking stock of all the creatures milling about when a bald zombie shuffled up to them excitedly. He was dressed in ripped, blood-encrusted robes of some kind, and his eyes were completely white.

The wrinkled old creature shivered with exhilaration as he greeted the group. As he moved to face each zombie, he placed a hand somewhere on their body.

"Greetings, greetings!" the old undead cried, pressing a hand against Ghost's bloody chest. "We have not received this many pilgrims in quite a time! You are most welcome here, my friends, as I see you have traveled far; do any of you require assistance?"

Gore looked down at Blood, who was lucid once more but still trembling painfully.

"This [little one] here is in…" Gore searched for the word, but his language did not contain a word for what the humans called "pain". "…distress."

The old zombie's eyes shone curiously as he shifted sideways and placed a hand on Blood's forehead. She stared at him intensely, but did not move as he closed his eyes and made a strange little humming noise. Suddenly, the old one emitted a gasp of surprise and stepped back, eyes wide in amazement.

"Impossible…" he mumbled to himself, "this little one cannot truly…"

"What is it, [old one]?" Ghost asked, moving forward to grasp the blind zombie's shoulder. "What ails the girl?"

The old zombie seemed to notice Ghost for the first time. His empty eyes rolled madly in their sockets, and he continued to mumble, but too quietly to be understood.

"What?!" Ghost practically screamed, shaking the old zombie by his shoulders, "What _is_ it?!"

The old zombie smacked his gums dryly and responded.

"The girl…she is…it is impossible, for she is [dead], but…"

"What?!"

"The girl," the ancient undead whispered as if he did not believe his own words, "is with child."

5


End file.
